Cantonese Wonton Noodles (云吞面)

Wonton noodles, otherwise known as 云吞面 (or wonton mee), is usually served with char siew and chye sim as side dishes, as well as green chillies in light soy sauce to eat the noodles with. Given that there are so many things to prepare beforehand (as is apparent in the lengthy recipe below), it is therefore not an easy dish to make at home at all.

Ingredients (wonton/pork dumpling):

• Minced pork: 500g
• Fresh prawns: 150g, deshelled and deveined
• Corn starch: 1 tbsp
• Chinese parsley: 1 stalk, chopped finely
• Chicken stock cube: 1, stirred into 1/4 cup boiling water
• Fish sauce: 2 tbsp
• Sesame oil: 2 tbsp
• Shaoxing wine: 1 tbsp
• White pepper: 1 tsp
• Water chestnut: 8, diced into small cubes
• Wonton skin/wrappers: 2 packs (about 40 – 50 pieces per pack)
• Water: 1/2 cup, for wrapping wontons

Method (wonton/pork dumpling):

1. Chop minced meat and prawns together.
2. Mix corn starch into minced meat mixture.
3. Add parsley, stock cube mixture, fish sauce, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine and pepper.
4. Continue chopping for another 15 min till texture starts to become bouncy. Alternatively, you can use a blender to pulse the mixture, though the resulting texture would not be as good.
5. Mix in chestnuts.
6. Place 3/4 tbsp meat filling onto 1 piece of wonton skin near to 1 of its 4 corners. Roll up that corner towards the center to wrap up the meat, leaving a small triangle at the bottom corner.
7. Press both ends of the rolled up portion to push the meat to the center of the dumpling.
8. Spread some water onto one end of the rolled up portion. Raise both ends up towards each other. Place the end with water below the other end to seal up the bundle.
9. Repeat steps six to eight for the rest of the wontons.

Ingredients (noodle sauce):

• Sesame oil: 1/2 tbsp
• Dark sweet sauce: 1 tbsp
• Light soy sauce: 1 tbsp
• Oyster sauce: 1 .5 tbsp
• Corn starch: 1/2 tsp + 1 tbsp water
• Ketchup: 1/2 tbsp
• Pepper: to taste
• Salt: to taste
• Chicken stock (or stock from cooking wonton, as below): 1/2 cup
• Sambal chilli: 1 tbsp

Method (noodle sauce):

1. Mix all the ingredients together.
2. Heat up the mixture very quickly in a small pot till bubbles start to form.
3. Remove from heat and set aside.

Ingredients (to cook and serve noodles):

• Dried anchovies: 2 tbsp
• Chye sim: 2 stalks, chopped roughly
• Chinese egg noodles: 3 rolls
• Char siew: 200g, sliced
• Green chillies (optional): as condiment

Method (to cook and serve noodles):

1. Boil 3 cups water with dried anchovies.
2. Add wonton into stock and cook them for about 5 min. They are cooked once they float up onto the surface of the stock. Set aside.
3. Blanch chye sim quickly in stock. Set aside.
4. Cook noodles in another pot of boiling water for 5 min.
5. Remove them from the boiling water. Rinse in cold water quickly.
6. Plate up noodles with wontons, char siew and chye sim.
7. Pour 1 ladle of noodle sauce over each plate of noodles. Serve with green chillies.

Tricks:

• Adding chestnuts to the minced meat mixture helps enhance the texture of the dumplings; the stock cube mixture makes the dumplings juicier and softer too.
• Cooking the noodles in a separate pot of water helps to wash the starch away from them first, which is why they are not cooked in the same pot as the soup for the dumplings and vegetables.
• Use the remaining minced meat mixture to cook the soup, which makes for another delicious side dish.

Serving:

• 2 servings of noodles
• About 80 wontons (keep the extras frozen so that they don’t stick together)

Fiery rating:
👿 👿